


But is She

by wheel_pen



Series: Alice [22]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Naughtiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 00:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark has three reasons why Alice can’t possibly be an alien like himself. This story is unfinished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But is She

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Alice, my original female character, is new in Smallville. There is something special about her, and she and Clark form a relationship.
> 
> 2\. This series starts after the end of the second season—after the destruction of the spaceship and Clark abruptly leaving town.
> 
> 3\. Underage warning: This story may contain human or human-like teenagers, in high school, in sexual situations.
> 
> 4\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

_autumn/early winter, senior year_

            “Yes but son,” Jonathan pressed, “did you ever consider that with Alice’s gifts being so similar to yours, that maybe she’s also…”

            “An alien?” finished Clark, raising his eyebrows skeptically. He shook his head and lifted the jug of milk to his mouth. “I don’t think so, Dad.”

            “But how do you know?” Martha insisted. “I mean, what if—what if she’s a relative?”

            Clark choked on the milk he was swallowing and coughed it up hard enough to tear a hole in the dishrag Martha quickly handed him. “Um, no, I don’t think that’s true,” he sputtered when he could finally speak. And wouldn’t it be _really_ awkward if it were. “Alice was adopted when she was a baby, and that was, like, three years before the meteor shower,” Clark pointed out. “And besides, she isn’t affected by the meteor rocks.”

            That seemed to Clark to be definitive evidence, but his parents exchanged a glance that suggested they weren’t satisfied. “There’ve been lots of people with… strange abilities that didn’t have anything to do with the meteors,” Clark continued. “Like that girl who could suck the youth out of other people to preserve her own—she started out in 1921. And Ryan could read minds long before he ever came to Smallville. And that Nicodemus flower”—his father blanched a bit at the mention of the plant—“that was causing problems over a century ago.” He was sure he could come up with more examples, given time to think.

            “Well, you’re probably right, son,” Jonathan conceded, and Clark breathed a small sigh of relief. “I have to admit, we’ve seen more than our share of oddities around here.”

 

*****

            The way Clark saw it, and the way he had explained it to Alice a dozen times, there were three prerequisites needed before Alice could be declared an official alien from Krypton, despite her abilities being so similar to his own:

            1) She had to be adversely affected by the meteor rocks, as Clark was. Given that Alice was now living in Smallville and _surrounded_ by unpleasant green crystals lurking in the woods, the ponds, and so forth, but she had never felt any ill effects from them, Clark decided he could rule this possibility out. Alice had, after all, saved _him_ from the Kryptonite many times, by picking up rocks and hurling them away, with none of the nausea, weakness, blood boiling, or other nightmarish symptoms that plagued Clark.

            2) She couldn’t appear on Earth any sooner than October 16, 1989, the day of the Smallville meteor shower. Alright, granted, Kryptonians had apparently been vacationing on Earth and enjoying the native hospitality on and off for several centuries—witness the Kawatche Skinwalkers’ legend and Jor-El’s little tryst with Louise McCallum, Lana’s great-aunt—but Meg had been very specific: Alice was adopted as an infant in 1986. Okay, yes, it was October 18, 1986, but that could easily just be a coincidence. It seemed very unlikely to Clark that someone on Krypton would send a baby to Earth in 1986—what, attached to a weather balloon or something? He had checked, and there was no unusual astronomical activity on that day—and then three years later, send a three-year-old to the same place in a fiery cataclysm of radioactive rocks. Also, given that Clark now suspected he had been directed very precisely not just at Smallville, but also at Jonathan and Martha Kent, he just couldn’t buy that Alice had ended up over 1200 miles away in Gotham City.

            3) And the one thing that would _really_ convince Clark of Alice’s unearthly origins—her spaceship. It’s not like Meg Wilson even _had_ a storm cellar to hide one in, and a pod like Clark’s just couldn’t land in the middle of Gotham City without _someone_ taking note of it. And that someone probably would have found Alice, and the whole story would be very different. Besides which, Dr. Swann had been very clear—there was only _one_ message transmitted to Earth on the day of the meteor shower, or at any other time since he had begun monitoring. _“This is Kal-El of Krypton. Our infant son, our last hope. Please protect him and deliver him from evil. We will be with you, Kal-El, for all the days of your life.”_ Sometimes Clark heard the words in his head at night, over and over until he couldn’t sleep, wondering what they meant and what kind of people they were from. But the point was, only _one_ name was mentioned. _“Our last hope.”_ Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton. Not Kal-El, salutatorian of the Krypton-Earth infant-exchange program, class of 1989 (not even in sarcasm could Clark pretend he’d ever be a _valedictorian_ ). There was only _one_ message, _one_ ship, _one_ key, _one_ set of cave paintings that spoke of _one_ person who fell from the sky. And surely Jor-El would have mentioned it to Clark, if there were another Kryptonian somewhere out there—surely Jor-El would have been busting Clark’s a-s for him to find her.

            So in Clark’s mind, those were three excellent reasons why Alice was _not_ an alien. He didn’t know _what_ she was, of course, but as he had often mentioned to her, there were a lot of weird things in the world, not all of them connected to the meteor rocks. The theory he was working on at the moment was that her biological mother had been a participant in some kind of experimental drug trial that went horribly awry. Upon hearing this theory Alice had accused Clark of watching _Firestarter_ a few too many times.

            Alice didn’t want to be an alien anyway. And it wasn’t that Clark didn’t _want_ her to... It would have made him feel less alone, to know that there was someone else from wherever he was from, even if she didn’t know anymore about it than he did. But, to be honest, knowing Alice just as she was had already made him feel so much less alone... Ever since Cassandra’s vision, when he saw himself surrounded by the tombstones of everyone he cared about, Clark had been worried, occasionally terrified, that he would spend the majority of his possibly very long life alone—or at best, watching people he came to love continually growing old and dying in front of him. He didn’t think he could take that kind of pain, and sometimes when he got to brooding about it too much he thought again about that isolated little pond spanned only by the narrow, rickety bridge, the pond with the abnormally-large collection of meteor rocks at the bottom, enough to make him woozy every time he passed by. But the one time he _had_ actually succumbed to the temptation to dive into that pond—albeit after brooding about slightly different but no less painful subjects—Alice had pulled him out. And Alice, with her invulnerability to harm, seemed destined to live a very long time herself. Maybe as long as he did. And Clark really didn’t care _where_ she got that ability—he just allowed himself a tiny, tiny bit of hope that maybe he wouldn’t end up completely alone, that maybe Alice would always be with him. He didn’t dare hope for anything more... the disappointment he had felt when Cyrus Krup’s “alien” secret identity had been revealed as a meteor rock effect combined with an unfortunate delusion had been crushing.

            So Alice wasn’t an alien, Clark had decided. She didn’t meet the criteria, didn’t even come close. Which was fine. He wasn’t going to worry about it. He was just going to enjoy her for being Alice. It really didn’t make any difference to him whether she had powers like his. It really didn’t make any difference to him whether she was an alien or not. But she probably wasn’t.

            Or was she?

 

******

Strike One

            Clark and his parents were in the middle of dinner when his super-hearing picked up a distinctive _whoosh_. The kitchen door flashed open and closed, and then Alice was standing in the kitchen, her face damp, eyes red. She’d been crying.

            “Alice!” Clark jumped up from the table and went for her.

            Alice turned away, quickly trying to brush her tears away and straighten her clothes. “Sorry, Clark,” she told them, sniffling a little. “I didn’t meant to interrupt dinner. I can, um—“

            Clark had one hand on her arm to stop her from racing away again. “No, don’t leave,” he insisted, gently pushing dark curls out of her face. “What’s wrong?” He noticed his parents sitting very still at the dinner table, in the hopes Alice wouldn’t remember their presence.

            “I just, um—“ The tears welled up in her blue eyes again, threatening to spill over. “Clark, my mom _lied_ to me!” She threw herself at him, dampening his red t-shirt with her tears, and he rubbed her back, trying to calm her.

            “What are you talking about, Alice?” he asked carefully, maneuvering her over to one of the kitchen stools. He sat down on the stool beside her, breaking the embrace but never letting go of her hands.

            “My mom, she—you know Robert Madigan?” Clark nodded. He was the ex-boyfriend of Alice’s mom who had rolled into Smallville with the desperate idea that he and Meg were Alice’s biological parents, and that Meg had invented the whole ‘adoption’ story to throw him off the scent. “Not that I would ever _believe_ any of his story, but... He said he had done a lot of investigation, in Gotham, and he said that my adoption records had been forged.”

            “Well, Alice...” Clark began carefully, glancing beyond her to his parents for a moment, “ _my_ adoption records aren’t exactly watertight either.” He saw his father look away; Jonathan still felt guilty about the deal he’d made with Lionel Luthor to get Clark’s adoption to look legal on the surface. “I mean, you can’t just pick a kid up out of a cornfield, or a dumpster, and take them home with you—legally, I mean. But if either of us had gone through the usual Child Services route, we’d probably be—“ He decided not to specifically evoke a high-security science lab and instead finished, “—a lot worse off.”

            Alice nodded. “I know. My grandma worked in Child Services in Gotham for over thirty years, I’m sure she knew _exactly_ how to fake the documents, but... It wasn’t just the names and places and medical records that were made up, Clark.”

            He frowned at her, brushing away a stray strand of hair. “What do you mean?”

            She stared down at her hands in her lap, clutching Clark’s. “My mom and grandma and I started talking about it, and—the _dates_ were changed, too.”

            A cold feeling began in the pit of Clark’s stomach, like he’d swallowed an ice cube. “The dates?”

            “My mom didn’t find me when I was a baby,” Alice told him, fresh tears dripping. “She found me when I was three or four, not lying in a dumpster but just walking down an alleyway.” Clark’s jaw dropped a little, and he started to speak, but she pressed on plaintively. “Clark, if I was a newborn, and there was something _weird_ about me, and my parents got scared and _dumped_ me—I mean, I think I could live with that, and know that I ended up somewhere better. But if they raised me until I was three or four years old—“ She looked up at him, blue eyes fierce and intense. “How do I know they didn’t just _lose_ me? How do I know that they aren’t still out there, looking for me? What if I was supposed to have a totally different life?”

            Clark wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close as she started sobbing again. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Alice cry—it only happened when she was absolutely devastated. He thought back a few years, to when his parents had first told him about his unearthly origins, and how upset he’d been—but at least the dissolution of _that_ lie had helped explain things, or at least explain why they _couldn’t_ explain things. Alice’s new story only seemed to _add_ to her confusion and uncertainty.

            Unless. A jolt went through Clark, like a small electric shock, and he gently pulled Alice away from him to ask, in what he hoped was a casual tone, “Alice... so what day did your mom _really_ find you?”

            Alice brushed away her tears with the back of her hand and the dishtowel Clark finally snagged for her. “She said it was the same time of year she’d always told me.” Alice sounded as if she weren’t quite sure she could take _anything_ Meg had said at face value again. “Only three years later. So, I guess—October 18... 1989.”

            Clark pulled her back to him, running his fingers through her hair as she continued to squeeze out a few more tears. Over her dark head he met his parents’ gazes from the dinner table, the three of them various permutations of shock, fear, confusion, and maybe even a little hope.

            October 18, 1989 was two days after the Smallville meteor shower. And not even Clark believed in coincidence _that_ strongly.

 

******

Strike Two

            Clark opened the window as quietly as he could, scanning the interior of the darkened warehouse for activity. He couldn’t use his x-ray vision to penetrate the gloom, unfortunately, unless he wanted both he and Alice to plummet rather abruptly back to Earth, but he’d checked it while still on the ground—several meters from Alice—and all the people in attendance seemed to be congregated in the front room. Clark awkwardly turned back to Alice a little and gave her a nod, and she gently floated up a few more feet so he could maneuver himself through the window. He tried very hard not to look down as he prepared for her to let him go; it was a thirty-foot drop from the top of the warehouse with the windows to the floor below. It wouldn’t hurt him, of course, and the landing spot near the wall was clear, but being up that high still gave Clark vertigo.

            Once he was hanging awkwardly halfway through the window, he gave Alice another nod and she let go. The fall was swift and he hit the floor on his feet, dropping into a crouch, hoping the _thud_ he’d caused had been quieter than it sounded to his own ears. Taking advantage of Alice’s distance Clark quickly checked the room with x-rays; the guards were still at the other end of the building. Feeling it was safe to move on, Clark scrambled out of his hiding place and towards another stack of crates, a dozen feet closer to their goal of figuring out who these people were and what they were doing in Smallville.

            He had barely concealed himself again when he started to feel it and let out the worst curse words he could come up with—mentally, of course. Nausea, weakness, dizziness crashed into Clark and he slumped against the wall behind the crates, trying to keep his eyes open long enough to divine the source of the green kryptonite. He wasn’t right on top of it because he didn’t feel the horrible blood-boiling sensation, but it couldn’t be too far away—ah, s—t. About twenty-five feet away, under a tarp, was a sizable stack of refined green K bricks, glowing softly in response to Clark’s presence—or had that effect always just been in his mind? D—n! He’d thought those were the gold bricks he’d spotted the men loading late at night, the ones that had aroused his suspicions to begin with. Well, when Alice got here, maybe she could—

            There was a _thump_ beside and partially on top of him as Alice landed sharply, and Clark looked over at her in alarm. “Alice?” he gasped out. Even if they _hadn’t_ been trying to keep quiet, he didn’t think he could speak any louder. “Alice?”

            “Oh G-d,” she moaned, struggling to sit up. She clutched at her stomach and started to curl into a ball on the dirty floor. “What—what the h—l, Clark?”

            Shock almost overcome the nausea. Clark grabbed Alice’s hand and weakly pulled it closer to the green K bricks, watching in sick, blurry-eyed fascination as her veins started to pop out and turn blackish-green. Their eyes met, just for an instant, then they both turned towards the sound of footsteps leisurely approaching their position. One of the guards had finally decided to check on things, and at this point neither of them was very well hidden—or in a position to move quickly.

            “Come on, Alice,” Clark hissed, as quietly as he could, giving her an ineffectual shove away from the green K. “We have to get out of here...” Alice flopped over, sprawled on the floor in the _other_ direction, but showed no signs of actually being able to move on her own. Clark thought the two of them could crawl towards the opposite wall, where they’d come in; the farther they got from the green K, the easier it would be. Unfortunately, however, that stretch of the warehouse was completely open and easily in view of the patrolling guard. Still, Clark reasoned it was their only chance. If all else failed, perhaps he and Alice would be dragged to the front room for interrogation, and then they’d be fine and able to escape.

            Clark was more used to trying to operate despite the green K’s effects than Alice was, and he scooted up behind her, trying to push her a few inches across the floor. He could tell it was going to be a painful, slow process, however, since Alice seemed incapable of helping in any way. “Alice!” he whispered, lips directly over her ear. “Alice, we have to get out of here, away from the green K...” In case she hadn’t figured that out. A dark head nodded slowly and he saw her hands reach out across the floor, trying to pull the rest of her along, muscles straining to overcome the meteor rocks’ radiation. Okay, they were starting to make a little progress now, and the farther away from the bricks they got the stronger they would—

            “Hey!” Clark turned to see the sharp-eyed guard watching the shadows around them suspiciously. In their current positions he was sure they didn’t exactly make human‑esque shapes, but if this guard was also trigger-happy and just started shooting—But then again, they couldn’t just _stop_ —The guard came closer, flicking on his flashlight. The light momentarily blinded Clark and he knew they’d been spotted. “Hold it right there!”

            Clark was forcing his mushy mind to try and think up a plausible reason for being in the warehouse—um, they were just a stupid teenage couple looking for a place to make out, because um, her parents didn’t like him, or maybe she already had a boyfriend, and um, they just saw this big empty warehouse—when suddenly a wall of flame jumped up from the concrete floor, separating the guard from the two teenagers. Clark looked over at Alice, who was biting her lip with concentration, and knew she couldn’t keep the defense up for long. Gathering whatever strength he possessed, he struggled to his feet, grabbed her around the waist, and half-ran, half-crawled towards the far wall, feeling his strength return with every stumbled step. At last the two of them hit the wall with enough force to bend the thin corrugated metal, popping it open on the seam and allowing them to spill out into the weedy yard behind the structure.

            There was no sunlight for Clark to absorb to speed his recovery, but just being away from the green kryptonite helped immensely, and he could see Alice getting livelier as well. Grabbing her hand, the two of them scrambled even farther from the building, into the protection of the nearby woods, where they could flop back onto the grass for a few minutes and catch their breath. They’d be back to full strength—and long gone--before the guards could even investigate. In the meantime, that left Clark with only one thing to contemplate: that Alice had reacted to the green kryptonite exactly the way _he_ did.

 

Note: Strike Three, which I never wrote, was supposed to be something about Alice’s spaceship… So indeed, Alice appears to be a fellow Kryptonian.


End file.
